Victoria Regional Transit System

The Victoria Regional Transit System provides public transportation in the Greater Victoria region of British Columbia, Canada. Its operations are governed by the Victoria Regional Transit Commission in association with BC Transit. There were 25 million trips in 2023–2024.

Transit service began on February 22, 1890 by the National Electric Tramway and Light Company with four street cars on two routes. On May 26, 1896 a packed streetcar crashed through the Point Ellice Bridge and 55 people were killed. The Consolidated Electric Railway Company was forced into receivership by the disaster and emerged reorganized as the British Columbia Electric Railway on April 15, 1897.

The use of buses started in 1923 for outlying routes. Although trolley buses were tried in 1945, the transit system was completely converted to motor buses in 1948. In 1961 BC Electric became part of BC Hydro, a Crown corporation, before the transit system was moved to the crown agency that would become BC Transit. In 2000, Victoria became the first city in North America to use low-floor buses and double decker buses in regular public transit service, as well as the first city to use hybrid double-decker buses in 2009. Victoria followed other BC Transit networks in late February 2020 with the introduction of compressed natural gas vehicles to their fleet.

Until 2019, all BC Transit vehicles in Victoria were equipped with Trekker Breeze+ annunciators to call out streets for the blind. BC Transit's NextRide automated stop and route announcements took the place of the street announcements, along with electronic screens on all buses showing the next stop.

In April 2023, BC Transit launched the first bus rapid transit line in the Victoria region. The new line is branded as Blink RapidBus (also operating as Line 95) and makes fewer stops with faster and more frequent service compared to typical bus lines.

The transit system has a total fleet of 356 buses on 37 conventional routes and 18 community bus routes covering Greater Victoria including: Victoria, Saanich, Oak Bay, Langford, Esquimalt, View Royal, Colwood, Central Saanich, North Saanich, Sidney, Metchosin, Highlands and Sooke.

Primary bus route destinations are: Downtown Victoria, the University of Victoria, the Royal Oak Exchange in Saanich, the CFB Dockyard in Esquimalt, Langford Exchange in Langford, the Colwood Exchange in Colwood and the B.C. Ferries terminal at Swartz Bay in North Saanich.

Routes are named for the direction of travel, thus each route has two (or more, if the route utilizes branches or short turns) names, indicating direction. Some routes also change in the evening or on weekends, which changes the route name again.